Harvard Business School’s Benjamin Edelman, Michael Luca, and Dan Svirsky created 20 identical Airbnb profiles, ten of which had names meant to sound African-American, ten of which were meant to sound white and undertook thousands of attempted Airbnb bookings in Baltimore, Dallas, LA, St Louis and DC. They found that black-seeming Airbnb users were 16% more likely to have their requests declined than white-seeming users.

The study follows on Edelman and Luca’s 2014 study, which found that black Airbnb hosts earned about 12% less than their white counterparts on their listings.

In the new study, the researchers left the fake profile photos blank, which is generally an impediment to any kind of booking — but even so, white-seeming users found it significantly easier to book rooms. [link]